


Answers

by babel



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:20:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex before he gave the tapes to Jay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Answers

You watch the tapes to find answers. Because you're so tired of questions. You're so tired of mysteries and maybes and so many possible answers that there really _are_  no answers.

Or, you watch the tapes until you know them by heart, until they're seared into your mind so deep that they couldn't slip away like so many memories, so many hours. You watch the tapes to give you a sense of control.

Or, you watch the tapes until you can believe that the situation you're in now is real. That this happened. That you aren't crazy. Or, if you are, _something_ drove you crazy. It's not just in your mind. It's _not_ just in your mind, no matter how much everyone tells you you're acting paranoid, you're not acting paranoid, you're acting realistic given the situation you're in and _they're_ the crazy ones because _why can't they remember_? Why do you have to be the one who remembers? Why can't _they_ remember?

Or, you watch the tapes to torture yourself. You watch your friends who aren't your friends now, who hardly know you now, move across the screen. You hear your own voice becoming progressively more hollow, more controlled (controlling what? what urges? what will happen if you stop controlling them?) You watch yourself from a million years ago ramble about making the expository scenes interesting enough to keep the hypothetical audience's attention, and Jay says something from behind the camera, and you have this easy smile that you couldn't even fake now. You watch the tapes and you try to smile that smile, but your lips only twitch awkwardly and you want to cry but you can't cry. You can't even really want to cry; it's more like you _want to_ want to cry.

Or, you watch the tapes because it's a compulsion that you don't understand, like so many compulsions lately. All the compulsions that rule your life. The compulsion to become a filmmaker in the first place. Was that you, or was that something else? Something that needed that camera? Has anything ever been you?

Or.

You don't actually watch the tapes at all. You keep them all in rows in a box, and you stare at the box for hours sometimes, knowing every single thing that is on every single one of those tapes and wishing you didn't. Wishing you really were crazy. Wishing you were able to miss your friends. Wishing everything you've become and everything you've done was nothing but a compulsion. Wishing you had no control.

So Jay asks you what you're going to do with all those tapes, and you say "Burn them." And you see this light in his eyes that you knew would be there. That curiosity, that need for _answers_ that you share and that has destroyed your life. You wish it were just a compulsion to draw him back into this when he could just go on not remembering. You wish you had someone to blame other than yourself.

Maybe you still wish, somewhere deep down, for answers somewhere in there for Jay to find.

But it's just as possible that you don't.


End file.
